In our country [US] equality means your liberal and freedom means you're conservative. That tension is there and it can't be handled on its own terms. It can't be handled as you go out of that and go back into natural institutions or natural law or divine revelation. Something outside of the system has to tell you the system has gone wrong.

Equality, therefore, becomes the criterion because we can handle all that in process, but we can't handle that as principle without infringing on freedom.

The primary moral judgment on candidates and their positions is to be made in the light of their concern for protecting human life from conception to natural death.

If you, however, separate reason and faith so that it's purely a rationalistic scheme, it will end in violence. If a pure faith scheme - sometimes called the fundamentalist scheme in modern parlance - you'll end in violence too.

If you're going to say you're Catholic, you inform your conscience so that you're activities will conform to what God is telling us through the Church. If God is telling you something outside of that, well, the Church will look at that and say: we think it is true or we don't think it is true. The Church might say: that might be true for you but it has no public normative value.

The trust is a matter of love and faith is a matter of truth. The two together give you the guidance that you look for.

So, in every case if you really love someone there is an element of submission to them because you want what's best for them, and at times they're going to tell you what's best for them. Even if you have second thoughts about it, you'll probably still do it because you love them.